


Bastion and Bulwark

by akitcougar



Series: We are the heroes (of our time) [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Bastion protects people, Gen, origin of about half the slang words of the universe, sidekicks and superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 17:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4067692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akitcougar/pseuds/akitcougar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Tu ai fi motivul să pot,</i><br/><i>Să pot s-o iau de la capăt.</i><br/>(You will be the reason to start,<br/>To start all over again.)<br/>- "De la capăt/All Over Again" (Voltaj)</p><p>One year after superpowered anomalies started appearing, Beck and Baz decide to become heroes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bastion and Bulwark

_June 1971_

    “What about 'Strongman'? I mean, it's literal, but...”

    “Come on, Baz,” I laughed, moving my knight to take his pawn. “No one will take you seriously with a name like 'Strongman'. What about, I don't know, 'Zeus'?”

    “Mrs. Crowley's _dog_ is named Zeus.” He moved his bishop closer to my queen.

    “Okay then,” I said, taking the bishop with my favorite piece before realizing he'd set up a trap. “Damn. 'Strongman' also ignores your flight.”

    Triumphantly, Baz took my queen with a castle. “Come on, Beck, I gotta figure out a name.”

    “I haven't figured out mine either,” I pointed out, trying to recover from my mistake.

    “Yeah, but honestly your power doesn't really work as a superhero. You'd be a better villain. Check.” His castle was about to take my king.

    I stared at the board for a bit. “That's checkmate, actually. Congrats, Baz, I think that's the first time you've won.”

    “Does this mean I can go with 'Strongman'?”

    “No. And I am not a villain!”

    “You could easily build a death ray like in those comic books your brother reads.”

    I sighed, leaning back into my chair and staring dejectedly at the lost chess game. A stray breeze toppled my king and a few other pieces. Unfortunately, plans for a “death ray” were already starting to form in my head, although it was a small gun rather than the grandiose lasers of the comics. “Could you stop giving me ideas like that? I’m not going to be a villain, and if I do I'm blaming you.”

    He clutched his chest. “Oh no, Beck, what- _ever_ will I do?” he mocked, over-dramatic as always.

    I chuckled. “Go easy on me, hero.”

    “What about 'Hero' as a name?”

    I rolled my eyes. “That's the most generic thing anyone could come up with. I guarantee you someone's already had that brilliant idea.”

    Baz's older brother stuck his head through the door of Baz's room. “Hey 'Bastian, you know where my football jersey went?”

    “Check the laundry room. I think Mom washed it.”

    “Shi- I mean, gosh darn,” he swore before realizing I was in the room. I rolled my eyes again. “My dried sweat was lucky.” He left again.

    Still, something had clicked.

    “Bastion.”

    “Huh?” Baz looked adorably confused.

    “Bastion. As a name.”

    Baz frowned. “I mean, it's just part of my name...”

    “No, no,” I said, sitting up and getting excited. “A bastion protects people.”

    He contemplated it, picking up the castle piece that had won him the game. “I like it.”

* * *

_July 1971_

    We were very lucky my sister wanted to create costumes for us, otherwise we'd have been stuck with t-shirts and jeans.

    Baz went with his favorite colors, dark green and gold, and his symbol was a castle piece. And a cape. He'd said that every good hero had to have a cape. Soaring above me, not even caring about a mask, he even looked part of a hero.

    I went for something simple, white and blue, since I wore a lot of the technology I'd built. Grappling hooks meant I could keep up with Baz when we went out as heroes, and I swung from building to building or ran across rooftops. Living in a small city meant that was pretty easy.

    Bastion and Bulwark. That's what we called ourselves. Him the shining beacon of hope in a city plagued by new supervillains, me the geeky sidekick who invented gadgets every time we went heroing.

    Well, that's what the news called me. Baz had always treated me like an equal, though. And, really, I saved him more than he saved me.

    Like right now.

    “Hey Electroman!” I heard Baz's voice call out.

    I groaned and clipped the grappling gun I was swinging on to my belt, pulling out a few pieces, parts, small tools, the usual stuff. While Baz did his thing with witty one-liners and that stupid catchphrase he came up with, I was fashioning a lightning rod to pull away the worst of Electroman's attacks. The rod looked vaguely like a spear.

    It was a funny thing. Back then, villains still did the comic book thing, monologuing about their plans to the hero. No one knew what they were doing, really. All these powers and things were less than a year old. Electroman babbled on about his latest plan to take out the city's power grid, giving me just enough time to finish the makeshift invention.

    Electroman finished his speech with a surprise lightning attack, and I flung the rod down in front of Baz, where it took the worst of the attack and deflected it from my friend.

    Baz flew forward and swung at Electroman with an uppercut, sending the villain skyward. I swung with my grappling hook, kicking him into the side of a brick building. I released the hook and landed in a crouch next to where Baz was hovering.

    “What'd he want this time, Bastion?” I asked.

    “What, you didn't pay attention to his 'take over the city' rant that he's given ten times at this point?” Baz laughed. “Just the usual.”

    I pulled my lightning rod out of the ground, breaking it down quickly and putting the component parts back in their pouches. “Police on their way yet?”

    Baz soared up above the buildings, looked around, and returned closer to the ground. “Yeah. Want me to handle PR again?”

    I grinned. “I'm just the sidekick, Baz. The hero always handles the PR.”

* * *

    Like all summers of childhood, it was fleeting and glorious.

    It was never meant to last. 

* * *

  _August 1971_

    Most of the villains we'd encountered were like Electroman: arrogant and stupid. They never did more than threaten people and very, very rarely caused serious harm.

    Not this one.

    I stared in horror as the blood spurted from the hole in Baz's chest.

    “Did he seriously expect me to monologue?” the villain said, completely calm about the fact that he had just _torn out Baz's heart from his chest_. “Only an idiot would do that.”

    I wanted to cry. I wanted to tear off the mask, be just a normal girl for once, instead of a superhero. I wanted to be angry, to feel something other than numb horror.

    Instead, my hands acted on their own, pulling out pieces and parts and assembling something I didn't even recognize until I was aiming it at him. A small gun-like object, a prototype based on my plan for a death ray. The idea Baz had given me.

    I had once told Baz I was not a villain.

    For him, I would become one.

    I squeezed the trigger, firing a single pulse of energy at the man.

    He never had time to notice. 

* * *

  _August 1984_

    After that, I put away the part of me that was Bulwark. There was no Bulwark, really, not without Bastion. I finished my senior year lonely and more than a little depressed.

    I attended Wayell as part of the fourth class of women there. I almost went for a science degree, but after Baz's death, I couldn't even pick up my parts.

    Political science, then, with a minor in economics.

    I made some friends, lost some more. Wayell was one of the homes of the allohuman rights movement. I helped some with that, pretending I was just an ally rather than an actual allohuman.

    Gone were the days where things were cut and dry like a comic book. Villains never monologued. They just killed and killed and didn’t care.

    Every so often, the urge to create, to fiddle with machine parts, reappeared. I learned how to repair cars to satisfy that. I couldn't pick up Bulwark's tools again. That would mean taking on the responsibility I’d abandoned with Baz’s death.

    I went into the government bureaucracy, dealing with the newly created National Allohuman Agency. I was their secretary. It was not a terribly good job, but I stuck with it because what else was I going to do with my life.

    Thirteen years after that day, I was a secretary with slightly higher security clearance.

    My boss, Mr. Grover, called me in one day. “Ms. Smith,” he said, because he never called anyone by their first name. “I need you to type up some ideas of mine for a new proposal.”

    “Yes sir,” I replied, putting my pen to the legal pad I carried around.

    Grover dictated for a while, and I put together the fact that this proposal was about creating government-sanctioned superheroes. The NAA wanted to collect them from the various departments they currently worked in into one overarching organization.

    “Now, I have one question for you, Ms. Smith.”

    I looked up from my paper. “Yes sir?”

    “I've been trying to come up with a name for this organization,” he said. “The name has to be catchy, you see, or something easy to say for people. It can't very well be the National Allohuman Protection Force, at least not for marketing it. Do you have any ideas?”

    I thought, remembering a fleeting, glorious summer of being a hero. I was hesitant to mention it, hesitant to bring it up, but I think Baz would have liked it this way.

    “Bastion,” I said finally. “Because a bastion protects people.” 

* * *

  _January 2013_

    I had honestly never expected there to be a party for my retirement. A quiet gathering, maybe, with some pithy, pointless gift from my boss.

    But then, I never expected to end up as the commander of Bastion.

    Mr. Grover was put in charge of the original Bastion, and he insisted I remain his secretary. When he retired, well, there was an opening. And who better than one of the masterminds behind Bastion.

    There were some things I was proud of. I created the Sidekicks program, something to help kids like Baz was and I used to be. My own secretary gave it the official bureaucratic name Bastion Junior Division, but to me they'd always be the Sidekicks. The ones quietly doing more work than people give them credit for.

    And then there were the things I wasn't so proud of. My predecessor handed me a mess in the 90s with the allohuman gang wars in New York. I made it end. A few people called for me to step down then, saying I was the villain, a murderer. And maybe I became one, but it was always to protect the people who didn’t appreciate it.

    I wondered what Baz would have thought of everything I'd done.

    I shook my head and tried to enjoy the party. My thoughts had drifted less and less to my childhood friend over the years. I had a career, a string of lovers, and my own apartment in New York, right across the street from the new headquarters that had just finished construction. I stood at the helm of Bastion for twenty years, and I tried, maybe even succeeded, to make it something Baz could be proud of, something like we were that one fleeting, glorious summer long ago.

Something that protects people.

A bastion.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Things and people responsible for this fic:** Bear and Kat and their epic visit to my home city, Eurovision 2015 finals ( _We are the heroes of our time!_ ), an extremely long conversation with a friend on the mechanics of time travel such that it doesn't cause paradoxes, thunderstorms, my newfound love of driving, the Three Fates and the Copy Editor, as always
> 
>  **Cast:**  
>  Rebecca “Beck” Smith - Bulwark (17 in 1971, 30 in 1984, 59 in 2013), creates plans for any piece of technology she can think of that loosely looks like existing inventions, childhood friend of Sebastian “Baz” Yeager  
> Sebastian “Baz” Yeager - Bastion (17 in 1971), superstrength and flight, namesake of the government-sanctioned hero organization  
> Electroman - generates lightning, either through converting kinetic energy or absorbing existing electrical energy, villain in Beck and Baz's hometown  
> Nameless villain - superstrength  
> Mr. Grover - NAA bureaucrat, created the proposal for a nationally-sponsored hero organization, Beck's boss in 1984, first Commander of Bastion


End file.
